A study of the way in which a play is adapted to the musical and theatrical conventions of the genres of opera and musical theatre to create effective dramaturgy. The module focuses on Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, and its adaptations Roméo et Juliette (Charles Gounod, 1867) and West Side Story (Leonard Bernstein, 1957). Thus the individual historical and aesthetic contexts for the creation of these two works also come under study.

The module aims to

• foster an appreciation of the current scholarly and musical debates involved in the historical study of music;
• explore in detail the music and the historical and cultural contexts appropriate to the topic;
• enhance the student experience of learning based on research-led teaching.

• demonstrate knowledge of the different styles and conventions of opera and musical theatre genres;
• comment critically on literary sources and demonstrate how they combine with musical and theatrical convention to create effective dramaturgy;
• discuss critically aspects of the staging of opera and musical theatre.

Teaching on this module takes the form of ten weekly 50-minute lectures/seminars. Two weeks are devoted to student-led seminars and all students attend all seminar presentations.

Discipline-specific skills

The ability to

• pursue independent musicological enquiry;
• demonstrate an understanding of the interrelationship of analytical and contextual aspects of historical study in music;
• demonstrate an elementary level of musical, bibliographical and textual literacy.

Generic skills

The ability to

• absorb concepts, build upon them and communicate the resultant synthesis accurately and convincingly in a coherent and communicable form;
• demonstrate initiative and transferable research and analytical skills;
• demonstrate the ability to carry out effective, self-directed research with the available resources in order to comply with the requirements of summative assessment;
• (especially in the group assessment task) critical thinking, team work, interpersonal communication, decision making, leadership, motivation of self/others, information retrieval, synthesis of information, manipulation of ICT.

The potential for reassessment in this module

The written commentary and/or the take-away paper can be retaken in the resit period subject to the approval of the Undergraduate Examination Board.

• Brief study of the genres of opera in France during the 19th century and the American musical in the first half of the 20th century
• Parallel analysis of comparable scenes form Gounod’s Roméo et Juliette and Bernstein’s West Side Story: first meetings, marriage scenes, consummation duets and final scenes
• Feedback session on written commentaries
• Use of DVD to bring the theatre into the classroom and provide a tool for analysis of the processes under study

Banfield, Stephen, Sondheim's Broadway Musicals (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1993)

Burton, Humphrey, Leonard Bernstein (London: Faber, 1994)

Huebner, Steven, The Operas of Charles Gounod (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990)

———, French Opera at the Fin de Siècle: Wagnerism, Nationalism, and Style (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999)

Lacombe, Hervé, The Keys to French Opera in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Edward Schneider (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001).

Myers, Paul, Leonard Bernstein (London: Phaidon, 1998)

Simeone, Nigel, Leonard Bernstein: West Side Story (Farnham: Ashgate, 2009)

Smith, Helen, There's a Place For Us: The Musical Theatre Works of Leonard Bernstein (Farnham: Ashgate, 2011)

Vaill, Amanda, Somewhere: A Life of Jerome Robbins (New York: Broadway Books, 2006)

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